Published: July 03, 2008

Sleepwalking DVD Review

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The title Sleepwalking could unfortunately refer either to the characters, or director William Maher. Sleepwalking would appear to be part of that growing crop of movies boasting all-star casts who have temporarily defected from Hollywood, to showcase their misused talents in offbeat projects that are duds in their own way.

Charlize Theron, who may have let Monster go to her head, does hooker duty again as star and producer of this movie. Theron plays a lady with loose morals in a small Northern California town, who dumps her 11-year-old daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) at the ramshackle home of her low-IQ brother, James (Nick Stahl), and disappears with her trucker boyfriend. When the authorities close in to place Tara in a foster home, James runs off with her to hide out at the farm of his malevolent dad, played with unnecessarily extreme malicious gusto by Dennis Hopper.

Taking its cue from the tabloids, Sleepwalking is yet another addition to that tacky category of scandal sheet cinema. Why do those celebrities, with their charmed Hollywood lives, imagine everyday people as a bunch of sleazy or dimwitted degenerates, misfits, con artists, torturers and assassins?

And Robb, looking much too old for a girl who's eleven, does her best along with the other performers, including Woody Harrelson, to light a fire under this dreary tale. But it's best to let Sleepwalker rest in peace.

Anchor Bay Entertainment
Rated R
2 stars

DVD Features: Theatrical Trailer; Featurette: A Mother's Shame, A Family's Pain: The Making Of Sleepwalkers.

Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and on radio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.